


Two, Three, Four, Five

by ArwenLune



Series: Rock Happy 'verse [13]
Category: Generation Kill, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Daily life on Atlantis, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, Team, Team Bonding, The Further Adventures Of Brad Colbert IN SPACE, What happens in Atlantis where the cameras aren't pointing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AR-4 goes on a rescue mission together with Nate's team. Brad can't come along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had part of this sitting around forever and wrote the rest over the past few weeks, which probably explains why I can't quite get it to a point where it feels right. But I'm tired of sitting on it, and I'm going to be AFK for a few weeks soon, so here you go.

"...wouldn't wake them. It will be morning before there's news, let them sleep as much as possible."

It took Brad a few moments to recognise Dr Keller's soft voice. She was in the doorway of the small ward, talking to a nurse. It was just him and Ronon in the room, so she'd definitely been talking about him.

He was vaguely aware that this was the first time he'd had a properly clear thought process in some time. He'd been in the infirmary for a while, he knew that - he had too many disjointed memories of team members by his bedside. Darren doing paperwork, or Michèl telling him stories about what was going on in the city. Lee sitting quietly with him, hand on his wrist to feel his pulse in favour of checking the monitors. Dusty? Yeah, he definitely remembered Dusty there too, and maybe Nate and Poke? And Laura telling him about the cool research she was doing while he was lounging around, because Marines could razz eachother about narrowly avoided Death By Alien Lizard Thing.

Because - yeah, it was slotting into place now, apparently he was finally lucid enough to really appreciate what had happened to him. He'd been bitten by some lizard-like thing on P8X-913. The memories of that were still messed up - he didn't remember the bite itself or falling, but he remembered detachedly watching his leg swell, pain trying to drag him away like a rip current, and Lee's face hovering over him as she injected him with something.

The last, hysterical thought had been that she wasn't telling him he was going to be okay. In his eight months of working with his team he'd never heard her promise anything she wasn't absolutely confident she could deliver - she was self-proclaimedly bad at 'soothing nonsense'. It was something he had always appreciated, but that had also meant that the absence of comforting words said something all by itself.

He raised his head to look at his leg, let it fall back down with a pained breath, and reached up to fold his pillow instead, all of which was ridiculously tiring. His leg was covered by a sheet, and it kind of felt like somebody else's leg, like it wasn't attached to him. At least it wasn't as hugely swollen as he remembered.

"Hello sergeant Colbert, it's good to see you awake. How are you feeling?" Dr Keller interrupted his thought process.

"Lucid."

"That's good to hear. Do you remember what happened?"

They went through what he remembered, and she filled him in on what he didn't.

 He'd spent the past six days flat on his back, hooked up to some kind of dialysis machine and with twice-daily Ancient healer thingy sessions on the bite wound. Now his leg had mostly returned to its original size, though he would need at least another week on the dialysis at night, and he would be feeling like a limp dishrag for a while longer than that.

 "Where's my team?"

 "They've been around quite a lot, actually, but they're-" her face did something complicated, "-busy, right now."

 He remembered the words that had woken him.

 "Okay doc, what news are we waiting for, and why would it be better if I slept until then?"

 She looked conflicted.

 "Just tell him, doc, or I will," Ronon said from the other bed.

The guy was recovering from knee surgery, something that had apparently been necessary to repair some serious wear and tear from his life as a runner. He was now wearing a bulky brace and still having the knee iced down.

Dr Keller nodded sharply, pulled up a chair, and broke the news.

With the team grounded until he was out of the woods, Dr Michèl Fournier had joined Dr Van Wyk on an AR-1/scientific mission to explore an Ancient ruin on Waronir. The expedition was on friendly terms with the indigenous people, but with Ronon staying in Atlantis for his planned knee surgery and two extra civilians along, Colonel Sheppard had taken a fire team from Bravo's first platoon as backup. More to help carry equipment than that he felt it was necessary for security. It was supposed to have been a relaxed three-day mission.

Then their first check-in had been... weird. Dr Keller didn't actually known exactly what had been said, just that Colonel Sheppard hadn't given any code phrases, but Major Lorne had found it strange that he hadn't taken a moment to ask about Ronon's surgery, which had taken place earlier that day. Mr Woolsey hadn't thought it strange, but the Gate control team had backed up the Major - normally Sheppard was much more talkative on his check-ins.

Lorne had responded to Sheppard as if Ronon was still in surgery and promised a new check-in four hours later with an update about Ronon, which Colonel Sheppard had agreed to.

Brad could only imagine what the control gallery had been like. Woolsey was far from popular in the city, because he was very new and the military personnel resented that he hadn't even given Colonel Carter the dignity of a proper handover of her command, not to mention a chance to say goodbye.

Most of the civilians were disgruntled that on top of that, they now had to deal with Dr McKay much more directly. According to Michèl, people hadn't really realised how much having Colonel Carter, who was easily able to keep up with McKay's intellect, had moderated the Chief Science Advisor. Now Woolsey had taken over, he had reverted to 'You wouldn't understand, just get out of the way' tactics more.

How anybody could think that it was a good idea to put somebody who was neither military nor a scientist in charge of a scientific/military outpost, Brad had no idea. Woolsey was a paper pusher of the worst sort, tended to waffle in the moments that needed decisive action and make snap judgements when more experienced people would have waited for more data. It was clear he was trying hard, but the expedition wasn't ready to forgive him for his treatment of Colonel Carter just yet.

Sgt Meyers had told him that Major Lorne was having to seriously exercise his own diplomatic skills to not let Colonel Sheppard sideline the diplomat completely in an emergency.

So yeah, the control gallery had probably been interesting in a situation where 'this just feels off' was all they had to go on.

He listened to Dr Keller as she explained that Major Lorne had sent for AR-4 to gear up and prepare a jumper, and Captain Brittner had elected to take AR-7 along.

Fuck.

The four hour check-in had been at 2300 last night, and Atlantis had used the few minutes of contact to send through the SRE team in a cloaked jumper. Jumpers automatically made scans and recorded data as soon as they exited the wormhole, so the team had been able to send preliminary surface scans and tracker data back to Atlantis, and Captain Brittner's voice saying "Confirmed hostage situ--" before the gate had shut down.

A squad of Marines had been sent to one of the outlying Pegasus planets to contact the _Hammond_ , which had left Atlantis a week ago. At max speed it would take more than a day for it to reach Waronir, which meant that the SRE team was on its own, without access to the heavily guarded gate, until morning.

Which meant that out of the twelve people Brad cared most about in Atlantis, ten were now in danger, out of his reach, and out of contact.

Dr Keller, thankfully understanding that he really, _really_ didn't want to talk about it, left him alone.

* * *

Brad was used to being in the middle of things when missions went wrong.  This time he couldn't do anything, could only wait. He was about well enough to read, but a game of chess on his tablet turned out to be too much, and he couldn't concentrate on the game of Quiqil he started with Ronon.

Ronon was a surprisingly cooperative patient, which judging by the way the infirmary staff acted, wasn't the usual state of affairs. It was clear that he was as frustrated as Brad was and going crazy with the inability to be there for his team. But he also clearly wanted his knee to recover, and Brad thought the guy was a little smitten with Doc Keller. Every time he got worked up about needing to be out of bed and how he didn't need to be coddled, the Doc would drop by for a few minutes and he'd calm down again.

The physiotherapist helped too - the guy was a former Gunnery Sergeant and had lost his right lower leg in Afghanistan. He had a great deal of experience in getting military personnel to take the recovery time they needed instead of pretending they were fine. Which was presumably exactly why Colonel Carter had fought so hard to push his position through the notoriously stingy IOA Staffing Committee.

Everybody called him Gunny Flack, though he wasn't actually in the Corps anymore. Flack was also the expedition's prosthetics expert; able to fit and make basic prosthetics on his own - a much welcomed skill when dealing with Wraith-torn societies - and measure people for more complicated prosthetics that could be made on Earth.

Currently his main task was making sure Brad and Ronon stayed where they were supposed to be, which was in bed. He was doing his best to keep them somewhat occupied, but respected that there was nothing he could do to cheer them. He'd only been on Atlantis for a couple of weeks, but spending most of his time in the infirmary must have driven home to him that Atlanteans thought of the word _team_ as capitalised.

* * *

At least the remaining two of Brad's circle were accounted for. Mike Wynn was just back from a trade mission, and dropped by the infirmary around lunch. Brad wondered if the infirmary staff had asked him to, because he hadn't felt like eating until Mike was working down a plate of alien lasagne next to his bed.

After nearly a year on AR6 Mike was pretty settled in and largely happy with his new role, but staying behind and having to wait for news about the others still grated. He told some amusing stories about how Loyra, their new Athosian team member, was settling in, but then they sank into gloomy silence. 

"On the one hand it sucks that all the good people are out together," Mike finally broke the silence, "But on the other hand, we don't have to worry that there's incompetent assholes trying to get them killed." Nate - Captain Fick, now - might not be CO for either of them anymore, that still mattered.

They were definitely all going to come back. Brad couldn't let himself contemplate otherwise. Tony was only three weeks from going home to see his wife and daughter.

Colonel Carter had fought hard for her revision of the deployment system, and though she hadn't seen its implementation, Woolsey had known better than to reverse it. Sending people to Atlantis for a whole year - and if they signed on, keeping them there - had made sense in the past, as a continuation of the first year when they hadn't actually known if people could come back at all. Now there was regular transport available and the numbers grew, it really didn't make sense to run the deployments like that anymore.

Scientists might often be happy to immerse themselves into their work in another galaxy for a year or two, but with using career military came the fact that many of the Marines had families. If the SGC wanted to hang onto good people, it needed to have a more sustainable schedule than 'away all year with four weeks of leave'. The system Colonel Carter had managed to hammer out with General O'Neill involved a rotation of five months on Atlantis, five months at the SGC, and two months leave. It was opt-in for now, designed to be introduced slowly so that replacement and rotation would be a gradual cycle.

Tony would be replaced on AR-7 by Staff Sergeant Keawe, who was pleased to get a shot at a gate team. Garza hadn't re-enlisted and would be working out his final three months as part of the Marine unit on the Daedalus, which promised to be boring as fuck. When Mike went back to Earth in six weeks, word was that Gunny Liehr would be taking over on AR-6. SGC personnel would rotate into the Rifle Companies to take their places, and more people would be stretching themselves and fielding new responsibilities.

It meant that things weren't going to be the same, and Brad was surprised at his own resistance to that idea. He knew most of his teammates would be opting out for a while yet: Darren was still with Dr Ingadottir and both were happy to stay, and he was pretty sure that nothing short of a direct order from General O'Neill would get Lee out of Atlantis before the restrictions about women in combat zones were lifted.

But Michèl was on his way out of the team, though nobody had said it out loud. None of them wanted to face it, but Brad had noticed that lately they hadn't done much in the way of first contact missions or other high risk things. He wasn't sure if there had been a conscious decision somewhere or if Captain Avery had just picked the missions he thought most fitting for the team, and those had steadily decreased in risk.

And Laura needed to be on Earth more often if she ever wanted anything of an academic career.

Brad, selfishly,  wasn't looking forward to their team being shaken up. As much as he thought Colonel Carter's plan was an excellent approach, the idea that his more or less stable circle of teammates and friends was going to be more fluid from now on made him a little sad. Atlantis had never been static, but his social circle had mostly been an exception to that.

The upside was that Nate was also going Earthside for two weeks leave - and a recruitment trip to Pendleton. Captain Patterson was on the list.

 _If_ Nate was still alive to make the trip.

No, he couldn't think like that.

He was vaguely aware that Dusty had dropped by the infirmary a few times over the past week, mostly under the guise of coming along with Lee. They were still trying to stay under the radar with their relationship and he knew not to expect her to sit at his bedside in the gossip hotbed of the infirmary. Now he was lucid enough to use his tablet, he could at least use the messenger program to talk to her. She came by in late afternoon with the video of her black belt test, which was impressive as hell. During her last leave she'd finally gotten her promotion.

At any other time they would have spent at least an hour hashing out the techniques in the video, but neither of them felt like talking. Brad couldn't drag his thoughts away from what might be happening on a planet far out of his reach. He knew Dusty was thinking of the same, and not even the knowledge that she was being considered for a gate team could lift their spirits.

To AR-7's delight, Major Teldy had arrived on Atlantis a few weeks ago and was putting together her team. Brad knew that Lee thought Dusty was a shoe-in and that it might already be decided, but Dusty was anything but certain and trying hard not to have too much hope.

Brad went maybe a little insane with the need to hold her. She had that look on her face, like she needed a hug but didn't know how to ask. When they were in private he could just give her one, and she'd stiffen up reflexively and then relax into him. Or sometimes he poked her - or, if he was feeling suicidal, tickled her - until she tackled him and they ended up on the floor, laughing and holding each other.

Right now she looked like she very much wanted to lean forward and rest her head on his shoulder. She might even have done so in front of Ronon, but then the physiotherapist came in to go through Ronon's routine. Dusty squeezed his hand with a rueful smile, and retreated.

* * *

"You should really try to eat something, sergeant," the nurse said, in the kind of kindly tone that made him feel like an asshole for refusing. His throat felt like it had closed up, and the food he'd eaten for lunch still felt like it was sitting in his stomach like a brick. He knew he'd lost weight over the past week and couldn't really afford not to eat if he wanted to be back on his feet as quickly as possible.

"Don't think I can," he admitted.

She gave an odd, clipped nod, then reached to a lower shelf of the food cart and put a couple of pudding cups and some power bars on his side table. Ronon got the same, and then she left them to their grim silence. Brad wondered how often the infirmary went through this, the breathless wait to see if teams would come back dirty and scraped or bleeding out on stretchers or.. not at all. A lot more often than he'd realised.

* * *

It had taken the entire year he'd been in Pegasus to learn just how overwhelmingly the odds could be against you, here. On Earth, Marines were encouraged to think of themselves as ten feet tall and bulletproof, the Corps as invincible, air support and Navy arty at your back.

In Pegasus there was _always_ a bigger hammer, and usually you were the nail.

He'd been with the team through over twenty rescue operations, eleven of which had involved hostile indigenous population. That had ranged from springing AR3 from Genii lockup (bring your own radiation detector - the Genii had needed a gene carrier to activate what they'd thought to be a powerful weapon, and turned out to be a fertility detector) to liberating Alpha Two's third squad from irate, and no less dangerous, primitive people with pointy spears.

He knew how much a rescue op was throwing yourself blindfolded into unknown waters and hoping you could learn to swim fast enough to survive the rapids up ahead. Even if you were very good - and they _were_ very good - it was never less than extremely high risk in all aspects.

It was why AR-7, to its members' chagrin, had been kept on milk runs and doubled up missions until they had acquired the appropriate appreciation for just how many new and inventive ways Pegasus had to screw you over. The understanding had dawned after they had, on a mission with AR-2, seen a cheerful welcome dinner turn into an at-spearpoint situation because they hadn't made the appropriate gestures over what turned out to be the ritual soup.

No matter how much they taught you, 4 out of 5 times you didn't see the shit before you had already stepped in it.

He maybe kind of wished he didn't understood that so well. Then it would have been easier to believe that his team would go in, find Michèl and AR-1 and the marines, and get them out. He wished he could be naive enough to believe it would be that straightforward.

* * *

"Change of plan, son," Gunny Flack breezed in around 2000 hours, followed by two orderlies with wheelchairs. "We're going to the Sanity Society meeting tonight."

"What?" He knew there was a meeting tonight, but AR-1 was supposed to be organising it, and they were in the middle of being, you know, _held hostage_.

He'd assumed that recreation ground to a halt at times like these. If somebody was unable to organise the Sanity Society team usually stepped in with an alternative activity, but were they really going to sit in the mess and enjoy themselves while other people might be -- when they were waiting on news from a rescue mission?

In the bed next to him, Ronon made a sort of snarling sound that made it clear he was thinking along the same lines.

"You are not the only one who is frustrated because you can't help, Ronon," Flack said, "It might not make you feel better, but at least you will have something to focus on for a while."

Brad prepared to turn the idea down, because he hated the idea of a cheerful Sanity Society meeting when he felt like he couldn't breathe with fear for his team. He wasn't in the mood for fun things and he thought that if he was carrying his sidearm he might want to shoot anybody who was.

On the other hand, it was the first time they'd offered to let him out of the bed, and the infirmary room was feeling claustrophobic with two men full of worry and frustration. At least there would be a change of scenery. And maybe Dusty would be there too, she at least would understand that he didn't feel like participating in whatever the hell they were doing tonight. 

"Okay."

He put on the sweats Flack had brought along, and let the orderly help him from the bed into the wheelchair. Ronon insisted on managing himself, though it clearly wasn't easy. Then Gunny Flack silently accompanied them to F1, more commonly known as The Glass Tower, and the circular top floor where the calmer Sanity Society meetings happened these days.

* * *

It was quiet, maybe twenty five people as opposed to the usual fifty or more. Somebody had lit Ariuh-spiced Athosian candles and spaced them around the sills of the tall windows that circled the space, and the main lights were off, leaving a warm glow. There was tea and coffee on a table, and some people were just sitting, others talking quietly. Brad didn't know many of them, though he recognised some of the faces from around the city. Mostly they were the people who did not go off-world.

Ronon spotted the two teens from M7G-677 who were on apprenticeship in the infirmary, and wheeled himself over to where they were staring out over the sea, which was lit by three moons tonight. Flack joined a small circle of off-duty medical personnel, who were all on standby pending the return of the rescue op.

Brad looked around, wanting to ask what he was supposed to do here, how this was better than the infirmary. Then he spotted Dr Ingadottir - Bryndis - close to the windows, where she was using the light of the candles to illuminate her spinning wheel. Well, there was somebody with experience in having to stay behind and wait for news. He wondered if it was like this for her every time AR-4 went on an SRE mission. Captain Avery didn't usually show much, though he did tended to disappear for a bit after their med-check to see her.

"Hello Brad," she said softly when he rolled up. "It's good to see you up."

He nodded vaguely in acknowledgement, then just sat there watching her hands. You couldn't live on Atlantis for a year without learning that people used all sorts of things to maintain their sanity under pressure. Crosswords, the really hardcore Bikram Yoga class, knitting, slacklining or the yo-yo trend that was currently taking the Anthill by storm - people found a way to break out of the sometimes grim realities of the Pegasus galaxy. Bryndis spun, and he watched, because it was kind of magic to see the big fluffy cloud of fibre she was holding turn into strong thread. Plus the steady clacking of the wheel, her hands and feet working together like clockwork, made for an almost hypnotic rhythm.

"What's the Society doing tonight?" he asked finally.

"This," she said, sounding a little confused. "What else?"

He looked around. Didn't really look like anybody was doing anything.

"It's called the Atlantis Society For The Preservation Of Sanity," she explained patiently. "Not the Fun and Games Society. Tonight, sanity preservation requires a calm place while we wait for news, and people who understand you, and maybe something to do with your hands. Marieke - Kay - is arranging that now."

He had never spared any thought for what the city was like during an offworld emergency. He was usually in the thick of it, either central to the emergency or on the rescue mission. But in a community as small as theirs, of course there were people who were waiting as anxiously as he was. Of course everybody was holding their breath, hoping that this time there would be no need for a Gate Room coffin ceremony.

* * *

A few minutes later a small group of people came in with boxes and crates they deposited on the tables. He recognised the Ops/Tech team, and, to his surprise, Dusty.

Petty Officer Ouseti, the wiry Caribbean woodworker who was the unbeaten Bouldering champion, made a round through the room, quietly inviting people.

"We're going to make climbing grips," he said when he came to Brad and Bryndis. "If you want something to do with your hands..."

Brad wheeled himself over to the tables, cursing when he got stuck between two chairs. Ouderijn, the Dutch navy tech, had to help him out.

At the tables Kay was setting out materials, large blocks of clay and trays of mechanical parts.

"Hey Brad. Missed you at BJJ." He'd learned to roll with many of the people in the BJJ class, but she was still one of his favourite training partners.

"Yeah, well."

"Do you want to pound clay or put together the.." she gestured at the trays.

"Clay."

She took a two-kilo brick of green plasticine clay and thumped it down on the table in front of him.

"If you can get that softened up?"

Ronon wheeled himself up to the table as well, and received a similar lump of clay.

Brad half listened to Kay patiently explaining to somebody how the devices were built. Apparently they were some sort of electromagnet that drew power directly from the city, which was how the climbing grips were attached to the outside of buildings.

He got the impression she'd done this before, the careful handling of worried people. If she hadn't been a civilian, she'd probably be the expedition's Morale Officer. He wondered how many times this had happened, since the start. How many times groups of anxious and worried people had gathered and tried to keep sane as they waited.

They weren't really thumping the clay on the table, but in the quiet room it was still fairly loud. Nobody seemed to mind. The clay was hard and cool, but with some effort he could press in his fingertips. It warmed and softened as he kneaded.

Dusty joined them, and for a long while they were all three just pounding away at the clay, hard hands and grim faces, as if their lives depended on it. When the first lump had softened he handed it off to the scientist who had sat down next to him with the box of devices, and cut himself a new lump. It was kind of hypnotic, and time flowed together.

More people had drifted into the room, lit more candles. There were six more at the table now, kneading grips around the magnets from the clay he and Dusty and Ronon softened up.

"Why the candles?" Ronon asked Kay at some point. Athosian spice tea had appeared next to them at some point, and they were no longer so grimly focused, perhaps some of the frustration worked out. Brad noticed it was a lot lighter in the room now, the entire windowsills filled with candles.

It took a moment for her to look up from the device she was assembling.

"Sorry?"

"The candles. What do they mean?"

"I guess here in Pegasus nobody wants to advertise their house like that, huh?" she said after a moment's thought.

"No." Ronon said grimly, and nobody needed to say that it hadn't saved Sateda.

"It's very... almost all cultures on Earth have something like it," she said after a long moment. "Means something different to everybody. To some it accompanies prayer - they ask their God to care for the people they worry about. Other people say it's a focal point for good energy, good thoughts."

"And you?"

"I come from..." she swiped a spiral curl from her forehead with the back of her hand, "my people were seafarers, of old. A candle in the window is like calling a loved one home. Giving them a beacon to steer their ship toward."

Brad wondered from how far the candle-lit tower room was visible from out at sea below. It had to look almost like a lighthouse. Not that there was anybody out there to see.

He wondered if most of the people here burned a candle for somebody in specific or for the mission as a whole. He had been so consumed by his own frustration and worry that he hadn't really thought about how the non-combatants of this city on the sea were also concerned. He thought of the Sanity Society meetings as upbeat times to unwind and had been angry that it was going ahead, but this vigil, too, was sanity preservation.

"Not my style," Ronon said finally. "Rather be out there, doing something."

"Yeah, me too," she agreed, selecting a small component from the tray in front of her and adding it to her work in a meditative sort of way. "But sometimes the most helpful thing I can do is to stay safely out of the way. Or at least, that's what I tell myself."

Ops/Tech didn't go offworld, but they tended to be at the frontline of emergencies on Atlantis, being the people who knew their way around the city best. They were the facilitators of the city, which in offworld emergencies apparently also included making sure the control gallery crew was fed, and that there was a place to go for people who were waiting for news so that the Gate room could be kept clear.

Apparently there had been times that their tasks had included emptying the infirmary of non-critical patients so as to have as many beds free as possible by taking patients.

"So then we have a room full of Marines who are wounded enough to not be released yet, but well enough to be really agitated and pissed off about it," Ouseti said. "That's always fun."

Brad couldn't imagine that staying out of the way could be the most helpful course of action, until he remembered some of the times Lee had needed to do field surgery. Captain Avery, who'd had the most medical training after herself, assisted, and Brad had had to stand back and let them work. He'd learned in those moments that that, too, was _trust_ \- trust that his team mates were better suited to a particular situation, trust that they would do it well, and trust that they would ask him to do the things they needed from him.

It had taken time to reach that level of trust within AR-4. For Brad to believe that Lee really was capable of defending herself in a firefight, and that she would ask his help if she needed it, and for her to stop worrying he'd think less of her if she asked his help.

* * *

Dusty was sitting opposite him, and while they didn't talk much, he was very aware of her presence and the support of their shared worry.

A lifetime of making sure nobody knew that he cared wasn't so easily shaken off; he still sometimes found himself shutting his mouth before words like "glad you're okay" or "I worried" or "good to see you" tripped off his tongue. The Corps tended to instil the idea that caring was weakness and you better not show any of that shit, even if sometimes you both knew you felt it.

On Atlantis, and especially within teams, that level of emotional involvement was accepted. Hell, sometimes even expected, and it had taken him the better part of a year to stop feeling like somebody was going to give him shit for looking relieved to see Cadman's reappear after she'd set off an explosion, or Michèl re-emerge safely from tense negotiations.

That Atlantis had a routine to take care of people who were waiting for their team or friends or colleagues.. that was something else. That Dusty was here, sharing the fact that she was worried too, helped somehow more than he could explain. He understood how much she was giving away of herself here, and how hard it still was for her to show any kind of weakness.

He couldn't move his wounded leg from how it was sitting on the slightly extended leg rest of his wheelchair, and the pain was steadily increasing enough that he'd have to take painkillers after all. But he had his other leg stretched out a little, and Dusty's ankle rested against his, warm and solid.

* * *

By midnight most people had drifted away. Ouderijn came in with a tray of thick slices of warm sweet bread.

Dr Zelenka trailed in after him. He looked forlornly at the few people still on the couches. A few of them had nodded off.

"Radek," Kay called softly. "Any news?"

He spotted the workers at the table and made a beeline for them.

"Marieke." He looked wrecked, wavering on his feet. Like he'd been working non stop. Probably he had. "We cannot dial Waronir, the Gate will not connect."

They all grimaced, because while that could be innocent, it usually wasn't.

"Major Lorne send you away?"

"Yes," the Czech doctor said heavily. "He tells me to sleep, but..." he made a helpless gesture. She caught one flailing hand and put her screwdriver into it.

"Sit. Assemble some magnets." She got up and gently shooed him into her chair, where he did indeed started to assemble the little devices with a faraway look on his face. "Is the Major standing down anytime soon?"

"Captain Lundgren just came up to take over until morning," Ouderijn said, passing out slices of bread. It was fresh out of the oven. Brad surreptiously took a deep breath before he took a bite. "The Major didn't look like he was going to rack out anytime soon though. Maybe you should go for a visit, he'll take it better from you."

It was no secret that Kay was the kind of person - and in the kind of position - willing to say anything that needed saying to anybody needing to hear it.  It didn't always make her popular, but it had made her the de-facto liaison between the city's civilians and Woolsey. Aware that Senior Command was still struggling to develop their own working relationships with the new leader, nobody wanted to burden Sheppard, Lorne or McKay more than needed.

Especially with small-but-necessary things like telling Woolsey he'd fucked up the authorisation of the maintenance supply requests (that wasn't a decimal point mistake, they really DID need that many spare parts for the pumps) or that he needed to double check before approving lab space requests (Linguistics had NOT been amused to be invaded by Marines who were looking to expand beyond the Anthill) or that he needed to mediate between McKay and Ops/Tech when the former used his position as Chief Scientific Advisor to put his own repair requests, including those to his personal quarters, at the top of their priority list. Nobody wanted a tactical war between Science and Maker Street. Apparently the last time that had led to a lot of non-working toilet systems.

With Woolsey out of his depth and Colonel Sheppard away, only Dr Keller had the kind of authority needed to tell Major Lorne to go get some rest. And she was holding her own vigil in the infirmary, according to Gunny Flack. The medical staff was at battle stations, trading off sleep in the racks in the staff break room. They weren't expecting news from the Hammond until morning, but there was always the chance that their teams would return through the Stargate after all.

***

About half an hour later Gunny Flack came in to take Brad and Ronon back to the infirmary. By that time Brad was more than ready to lie down. The painkillers had only dented the agony still throbbing through his leg, and he was exhausted. Being hooked up to the dialysis machine was pretty unpleasant, but he'd take it, under the circumstances.

Ronon briefly made a case for being allowed to spend the night in his quarters, but then seemed to realise that if he was in the infirmary, he'd probably be among the first to know about the mission's return. The infirmary would be among the first to get the call if there was an update.

Dusty leaned in to hug him, a little awkwardly because of the wheelchair. Apparently she didn't mind if these people knew they were together. He held on, cheek pressed against her hair, and hoped they'd be hugging in relief by tomorrow evening, not in shared grief.


	2. Chapter 2

He grabbed at the tangled underbrush that had hooked onto his BDU trousers, trying to get his leg free. His radio was blaring with static now, he could no longer hear Darren's clicks indicating how many wraith there were, or Michèl's hurried whisper. His team was in trouble and he was stuck in fucking bramble bushes while he needed to be there for them NOW.

He turned around to Lee, who'd been on his six, to ask her to cut him free. Somehow he couldn't move his hands anymore to get his knife to free himself. She wasn't there. He forced down the panic, bit on his tongue to stop himself from calling out for her. The wraith would hear, and if they found him he really wouldn't ever be able to help his team. He pulled harder at the brambles to free himself, trying to straighten up--

"STAFF SERGEANT COLBERT!"

He jolted out of his dream, the drill instructor voice reaching into his subconscious and dragging him right to the surface. Brad snapped open his eyes, taking a huge gulp of air.

Gunny Flack's gruff face hovered over him, and Brad realised the man was holding him down.

"You with us now?" he asked.

Brad tried to shake off the grasp of the dream, blinked a few times, and then nodded curtly.

"Good. Don't move, you're bleeding." he turned toward the door opening. "You can fix him up now, doc. He's awake."

Dr McBride came in and began working on Brad's leg. He was flat on his back and couldn't really see, but Ronon had apparently been staunching the wound, because his hands and forearms were covered in blood.

"Shit," Brad mumbled. He tasted blood. His tongue was bleeding. "Shit."

Because it _wasn't_ just a dream. His team was _gone_ , into unknown danger, and he couldn't follow

* * *

He was pretty sure McBride had drugged him in the course of stitching the leg wound. He'd actually ripped open the vein they were using for the Ancient dialysis type machine, so it had taken some time to close him back up. Since then he'd mostly slept, feeling strangely removed from the tension of the infirmary. He knew he was still worried about his team, but it was like being worried through a layer of cool, fluffy blankets. That would freak him out, but apparently he wasn't currently capable of freaking out.

Dusty had dropped by for a while between the classes she was teaching today - Brad's whole world felt like it was holding its breath, but life on Atlantis churned ever onward. These kind of things happened too often, and the expedition was too large, for it to do anything else.

At some point during the morning, presumably the point where he'd been really, really out of it, news had come from the _Hammond_ : they had arrived at Waronir, but had so far been unable to establish contact with either of the teams. Their scanners revealed Jumper Three, which was the one Colonel Sheppard's team had originally set out with, near the Ancient temple they had set out to examine. Colonel Carter couldn't locate anybody by their transcutaneous transmitters, but given that the Waronir people largely lived in an extensive cave network, that wasn't entirely unexpected. The Waronir gate had been pulled over, now laying face-down on the ground.

Further updates had been promised in the afternoon, when Colonel Carter had had the chance to sent out the F302s for flyovers and analyse the scanner data. It might have to come to setting the _Hammond_ 's two Marine squads on the ground, but Sheppard's nine people and the nine-man SRE team had already disappeared, so she wasn't going to do it without more intel.

"They'll be chomping at the bit," Mike said when he came by to visit. Starship duty was the most boring position the Stargate Program had to offer Marines. Entire tours passed without the men being able to leave the ship at all. It was a rotation usually given to people who were working off the last months of their enlistment, or working on schooling, as it offered plenty of time to study.

Brad nodded vaguely. His team was out there in danger and he was _here_ , safely in Atlantis, and they needed to come back or he thought he might actually _go insane_.

* * *

Brad was trying to choke down some dinner when the infirmary suddenly went into overdrive. It wasn't loud, but the sudden tense hush was palpable. He could hear Dr Neaves walk into the staff crashroom to wake the personnel that had been sleeping there with a curt "Get up. Battle stations."

Ronon was already swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. Then, wincing at the pain of his knee as it bent, apparently reconsidered walking, and transferred himself to his wheelchair.

"Shit, can you push mine this way?" Brad asked. He was fucked if he was going to stay in bed if things were happening right now.

Ronon looked conflicted for a moment, the instinct to act on his own, to get to his team without caring about anything or anybody else clearly strong. But they'd spent the past few days in the same position, commiserating the frustration of it, and apparently that had forged a bond. He wheeled himself around the bed and pushed Brad's wheelchair in range.

Brad found the lever to lower his bed, then put up the leg rest until it was horizontal. Ronon applied brakes and braced the chair, and Brad managed to get himself into it without tearing his stitches. It took a few breathless moment for the pain to ease off enough to allow for thought again, and then he settled his leg better and wheeled himself after Ronon's rapidly disappearing back.

* * *

They got waylaid by Dr Keller, who was in the offworld foyer, the large room where Gate teams collected and waited for their exams. She was with two orderlies who had gurneys, and there was a trolley full of bandages and assorted first aid material.

"Ronon - Sergeant Colbert," she said, not quite as hard as she looked right that moment, all grim efficiency. "They're coming straight here, and you'll only be in the way in the hallway."

Brad had to admit that was probably true, but he couldn't sit still.

Two other doctors came in, gloved up, and stood waiting while Dr Keller talked through the triage process. Brad wondered how often they'd done this, how many times he'd simply not been aware of how much impact offworld drama had on the city itself.

A commotion sounded down the hall, but Brad was staying out of the way and couldn't see.

"No homes, I've got this."

Retiz, one of the Marines from Bravo One Sheppard had taken along, appeared first. He looked pretty battered, scrapes all over his face and his cammies stained and torn. He was carrying the front of a stretcher Ray Person was lifting the back of. Beside the stretcher walked Captain Brittner, holding an IV bag and with her hand on the wrist of her patient.

Ray looked grim faced and the left side of his face was red, eyebrow and part of his hair scorched. He was silent apart from what he'd said to the Gate Room Marine who had apparently offered to take over the stretcher.

Brad had known all along that this was going to be bad, that this wasn't going to be one of those missions that became a funny story once the wounds had healed.

Somehow seeing Ray, quiet and grim, brought it home. Nobody was going to laugh this off.

Brittner moved aside, and Brad saw it was Michèl on the stretcher.

He clenched his fists, because he couldn't get in the way, because this wasn't about him.

Dr Keller directed them to lay Michèl on the gurney, stretcher and all, and in the space of a breath they had disappeared into the infirmary. Brittner still walking alongside, and Brad heard her say "stomach wound, infection, BP 60 over 40, he's had 1600 ml--" then the door shut behind them.

"I can walk. You don't need to mother me."

"We know, sir. It's making us feel better."

Colonel Sheppard walked in, flanked by Espera and Doc Bryan. His thigh was bandaged and the entire pantsleg under it stiff with dried blood. He looked anything but fine, but he was mostly walking under his own power. Tony and Bryan seemed to have a knack for making sure the Colonel didn't fall over without actually making him feel he was accepting help.

Dr McBride took one look at him and pointed at the nearest gurney.

More people trooped in. Dr McKay, grim and silent, supported Teyla. She had a head wound that had been bandaged, and, judging by her unsteady walking, a concussion. Ronon ground his teeth audibly, but he also relaxed a little, and wheeled after them into the infirmary. Nobody stopped him.

 _His_ team was complete.

 

Nate Fick was walking beside Captain Cadman, supporting her with a steadying hand under her elbow. The left side of her hair was scorched away, half her face and body burned as if she'd been in the same blastwave Ray had been, but closer. There was metallic gauze over her face and neck and hand, where the burns were worst, and somebody had written on her arm with sharpie. Probably how much pain relief drugs she'd already had, he realised, remembering what he'd seen Lee do.

Nate, scraped up and bloodstained, looked if not okay, then relatively unharmed. 

They were the last.

In all the confusion of a room suddenly flooded by weary and wounded people, Brad looked over the group, counting. Michèl and Lee inside, Cadman being looked at by Dr Neaves, who was taking her inside. He looked again, hoping the man was just hidden behind somebody. But no.

No Captain Avery.

Nate Fick, Tony Espera, Ray Person and Doc Bryan.

No Christopher

No Garza

Colonel Sheppard, Dr McKay and Teyla.

No Dr Van Wyk.

Bravo One's Sergeant Retiz.

No Sgt Estrada

No Sgt Sherman

No Staff Sergeant Silva.

 

From the eighteen people who had been on Waronir, eleven had returned. 


	3. Chapter 3

Brad sat still and silent in his wheelchair, out of the way of the milling men as they handed off their weapons to Waltemeyer and the others from the armoury. Dropped tac vests. Made an inventory of their assorted scrapes and bumps and reported them to Doc Bryan.

Brad watched Captain Brittner come back out through the infirmary doors, all the urgent patients now inside, and trail to a halt as if somebody had just unplugged her from the mains. Her BDU sleeves were soaked with blood, some of it drying, but he didn't think much of it was her own. She didn't seem wounded so much as... empty.

After a few moments of looking lost, she pulled herself together and gave the assembled crowd of Marines a meaningful look and a gesture to the sink. Apparently it worked, because they stopped themselves from flopping down in the waiting room chairs, and crammed in shoulder to shoulder at the long sink to scrub their hands.

He suddenly understood why after he'd been bitten by the lizard thing, she'd sat by his side and monitored his pulse with a hand on his wrist even though there were monitors. Sometimes you didn't want to rely on sight or sound, and needed to _feel_ the evidence to really let it sink in.

Their gazes crossed, and she came over. He recognised the posture, the expression in her eyes. The stiff, remote person that she'd needed to be to get through whatever they'd been through.

"Brad." It was acknowledgement and greeting and glad-to-see-you and please-don't-ask all in one word.

"Darren?" he asked in a low voice, because he knew it was bad, but he needed to know just how bad.

She startled, and snapped out of her thousand-yard stare at least a little.  
"Oh hell, I'm sorry-" she made an abortive gesture. "Darren is updating Major Lorne and Woolsey. He'll be along in a bit."

Relief rose to Brad's head like a fifth of vodka.

"We lost Dr Van Wyk and Sergeant Sherman. Estrada is in a coma and Silva has a concussion and a badly infected wound - they are both in the Hammond infirmary. So are Garza and Christopher." she recited off a mental list. "Garza got hit by a rockslide, and couldn't walk, and Christopher is mostly okay and stayed behind to keep him company."

Yeah, they didn't like for people to be alone after missions like this.

"How's Michèl?" he asked softly, because she didn't look relieved.

"Not well," she said, and he could see her retreat into medical professionalism. "He has a severe abdominal wound, sustained three days ago. Even with the Ancient healing equipment here, he'll be lucky to walk away from this."

He thought maybe he wanted to hug her. Or hold her hand, just for a moment, just to connect.

There was something in her eyes, though, that made him think she was close to tears. In one of those rare moments of synchronicity he understood with perfect clarity that if he set her off in front of the guys she would fucking _kill_ him. He hardened his gaze a little. He could give her this. He could give her cool professionalism, so that she could hang on to her own a little longer.

"Solid copy, ma'am."

She gave a brisk nod and turned away to the sink to wash her hands and arms. It took some effort to struggle out her tac vest and the blood-soaked BDU shirt, her left arm not cooperating. When she had it in her hands, Nate pointed out the wheeled laundry bin somebody had brought in. There was a dirty, soaked-through field dressing on her left upper arm.

"I could shower for a week, homes," Ray said wearily, flopping down in the chair nearest to Brad. A nurse had brought him a coolpack, which he was pressing against the burns on his face and neck. It looked like severe first degree - he didn't have blisters. "Except that would get in the way of sleeping for a week."

"Maybe we could rig some sort of hammock in the hot tub," Nate suggested, sitting down a seat over. Brad thought it was testament to both his time on Atlantis, and the weight of the mission behind him, that he was actually agreeing with Ray out loud. "With the urgent cases, our check-ups could take a while."

"Copy that, Cap," Ray said, slumping further into his seat.

Brad watched as Lee paced from the infirmary entrance to the sink and back. She patted her trouser pockets, and Brad grinned inwardly when Tony wordlessly handed her a powerbar. She looked like she was having an adrenaline comedown, and it was funny to see Tony take the role of caring-for-the-officer Brad himself had sometimes taken on in Iraq. Different place, different officer, but the dynamics stayed the same.

Tony was deliberately speaking to her in a low voice while he went to sit down, which had the effect of drawing her toward the seats to be able to hear him. Once there, a subtly inviting gesture to an empty seat and she finally settled.

Bryan pounced as if he'd been waiting for the opportunity - which, knowing the doc, he had, and Poke knew it. It was only ganging up if they didn't have the officer's best interest at heart.

"Let me have a look at your arm, ma'am."

From this angle Brad could see the ugly cut that was revealed when he peeled off the field dressing. She was saying what kind of antibiotics she'd shot herself up with when it happened. It still looked infected.

"Bradley my man, you haven't _lived_ until you've seen a five-foot-nothing Lieutenant shoot wraith darts out of the sky with a rail gun," Ray said, distracting him. 

"Wait, there were Wraith?"

"First there was the clusterfuck with the Waronies, or whatever the fuck they called themselves. Then there were Wraith. Which actually worked out okay for us, because everybody was so distracted that we could free the Colonel and the rest without having to shoot, like, loads of them."

"Then the Hammond beamed us up, and got into a dogfight with a hive ship. We were allowed to watch from the back of the bridge, it was _epic_."

"Colonel Carter is the bomb, dawg," Tony commented from across the room. "Firing plasma beams like it's cool - that was some proper sci-fi shit."

"Lieutenant Hailey, _damn_ \--"

Nate cleared his throat and gave Ray an 'enough now' look.

"--she's very competent with a large calibre energy weapon," Ray finished.

"When the Wraith fight was over the Hammond hopped over to the nearest planet with a Gate, and set us down with the people who really needed to be here urgently," Nate explained. "It'll take a day or three for the ship to get here."

"And the ship's doctor was happy to get some devil dogs out from underfoot."

Brad watched Bryan test Lee's hand strength. He didn't look happy. When an hour later Dr Neaves came to collect the first of their group for post-mission checkup, Bryan nudged her to go first, and she didn't protest.

* * *

"It was devastation on a scale we'd never seen before. Just everything.. completely in ruins. And the people.."

Colbert listened to Nate's report on the situation

"I mean, desperation is never pretty, but it was like some of them had just gone _feral_. And that was hard enough for us, but AR-1 and 4, they'd been there before, they knew some of them..."

He paused as Bryan told them all to report every single cut and scrape, as there was something nasty on that damn planet that seems to make everything infect.

"We don't need some idiot jarhead's hand rotting off because he thought he was too macho to report a papercut. Copy?"

"Copy, Doc," Nate said.

Bryan cracked a brief, raw smile. He looked exhausted and sad and angry, but not in the way Iraq had made him look, with the inheld fury that had felt like it might burn him up from the inside. He looked like some sleep might actually restore him a little.

"I'm sure that familiarity is how they captured Sheppard's team in the first place..." Nate continued.

A nurse came to take the next person to the post-mission checkup, and Bryan pointed at Ray. The rest settled in again to wait.

A little while later Dusty came in. Brad was a little surprised, because while she knew the guys and a few of them did BJJ, she had always refused to show they were together in front of them.

She didn't this time either, though. Just took everybody in as she looked around, told them she was glad they were okay.

"Lee's inside?" she asked him. Right, she wasn't here for him, not right now. He was still glad she was there, waiting silently with them.

* * *

"Hell of a team you've got, Brad," Nate said softly.

He felt an odd burst of pride, and didn't really know how to respond without sounding ridiculous.

"Hell of a thing, huh?" he settled for.

"I remember when you wrote 'good is pretty average around here'," Nate said with a rueful shake of his head. "It still catches me by surprise sometimes that I expect to be fighting against my CO and instead they'll ask for my opinion."

Brad nodded. Lee did that, on SRE missions - took everybody's specific expertise into account and weaved their insights into her plans. It was incredibly effective in the sort of situations they found themselves in, but it was also incredibly weird to Marines used to traditional command approaches. They didn't always see that expressly inviting input didn't mean she didn't have a tight rein on the final approach of the operation.

"Bunch of fuckin' overachievers, the lot of them," he said, sounding more fond than he'd intended to. Dusty snorted.

* * *

Lee came back out of the infirmary a while later, looking slightly fresher with a clean face. Gauze had been taped over her arm wound.

"Michèl's still in surgery. They're keeping Laura for the night," she told him.

She made to sit down in one of the free chairs near him, but Dusty got up, shaking her head.

"No, come on. Shower and sleep, Lee," she said.

"I want to-- I need to be here when there's news about Michèl," she sounded like even formulating a sentence was a strain now.

"I've got it, ma'am," Brad said softly. "I'll watch your sector. You can go shower and rest, come back when you're ready. I'll call you as soon as there's news."

Dusty gave him a grateful look. Lee visibly hesitated a moment, then gave in.

"All right. Thank you." Dusty lead her off down the corridor, talking softly.

Brad figured she'd do what she needed to be doing, which was shower and maybe cry her eyes out and then crash into bed and sleep a full day. Not that he wouldn't do as he'd promised anyway - it was nearing 2300, and he figured that as soon as all the guys had had their check-ups, somebody would remember to come collect him and hook him up to the Ancient dialysis machine for the night. He'd be told any news about Michèl, because the infirmary staff was good like that. They understood team-witten-with-a-capital-T.

Ray had already wandered off muttering about sleeping in the shower, and Retiz had gone to his quarters. Tony had sat back down with them afterward and then nodded off on the hard infirmary waiting room chairs, head leaned back against the wall.

The next time the nurse came for a new patient, it was only Nate and Bryan left waiting, and both of them indicated the other should go first, then stared at each other in weary amusement. Bryan pointedly raised his brows until Nate cracked a smile of amused acceptance and got to his feet.

Alone with Brad and the softly snoring Tony, Bryan leaned his forehead into his hand.

"What happened?" Brad asked carefully.

"I'd say that this galaxy is so fucking screwed up," Bryan said slowly, "if I didn't think Earth would be exactly the same in the circumstances."

He was silent for a while.

"The people who live near the Gate there don't have caves to hide in. They were mostly poor farmers. No health care, no prospects... apart from being the next culling victims. The government and the rich people had much more protection further away, and I think they kept those people there on purpose. To be the most convenient targets."

"Jesus."

"So the farmers kidnapped the team, trying to use the prospect of retalliation from us as a way to force the government to protect them better."

"That's... fucked up."

"Yeah." Bryan sat upright again. "They were so fucking desperate, and their fucking government refused to help, and then we had to go in and..."

Shoot people they had sympathised with, Brad realised. Those were always the worst missions.

Nate was out ten minutes later, and sat back down. They just waited in silence until Bryan got back out. Then Nate prodded Tony awake, and the three of them went off to the transporters and to their quarters.

Marie, the nurse who'd come to check who was left in the waiting room, smiled wearily at him.

"Come on sergeant, don't make me get Gunny Flack to get you back into your bed."

"I could always order him," Captain Avery said, walking into the waiting room. He seemed pleased to see that it was empty apart from them. He had showered and changed, but his normally warm brown skin had the grey tint of exhaustion.

"No need, sir," Brad said. He was exhausted and in pain, bed sounded good to him. "Good to see you're unhurt."

Darren gave him a small smile.

"Lee's already gone?"

"Yes sir. She said she'd be back after a shower, but  I doubt she'll manage to walk past her bed without crashing."

"Don't be so sure about that," Darren said as they went into the infirmary.

* * *

While Marie got Brad settled in bed and hooked him up to the machine, Darren disappeared into the main ward for a while, checking on everybody who'd been kept overnight. Ronon - and Ronon's bed - had disappeared. Marie said that AR-1 was in a different room, and that they were in reasonable state. The doctors didn't think there'd be lasting injuries, at least.

The captain returned 20 minutes later, pushing a bed with Laura sitting in it. She had an IV, and her head had been shorn, which made her look startlingly vulnerable.

"Really cap... I can walk..." she was obviously trying to sound indignant, but Brad guessed the drugs weren't letting her work up much in the way of ire.

"But you don't have to," he said, parking the bed next to Brad's. Then he went to the beds in the back of the room and pushed up one more, parking it opposite Brad's and Laura's. After a moment of hesitating he sat down on it and then slowly let himself topple over. The first sign of the exhaustion he must surely be feeling as well.

Brad looked at Laura, who was half packed into new metallic gauze bandages.

"Looks worse than it is," she said softly. "There'll be a few scars, but the Ancient skin healer..." she made a vague gesture. 

"Did they have to cut your hair?" she had burns in her neck, but nothing so high that it seemed to have been necessary.

"Half of it was ruined anyway..." she sounded like she was sinking away. "I told them to go ahead and clip it..." her eyes drifted shut.

Some time later there was a commotion down the hallway, and a few minutes later Michèl was wheeled in. He was on a ventilator and about 7 different monitors, looking ghostly pale and very, very fragile. Brad's breath caught in his throat with the need to be closer, to touch him.

The nurses installed the bed closest to the door, two metres away from Darren's, who'd gotten up again.

A few minutes later Dr Keller, obviously just out of her surgery scrubs, walked in with Lee. She'd showered and changed into sweatpants, an old Aeromed Evac hoodie and a pair of those ridiculous foam clogs.

"--agressively treating with antibiotics, and hope that the drains do their work. We've taken wound scrapings of all of your SRE team to try to determine what we're dealing with, and hopefully that will yield something."

Lee nodded.

"I wish I could say he's out of danger, but you know how gut wounds are. We'll see how he does overnight, and then tomorrow we're starting with the healer sessions."

An orderly brought in a high-backed lawn chair and set it down next to Michèl's bed.

"We are monitoring him, you know. You don't have to stay awake," Dr Keller said gently.

"Dusty fed me a double espresso," Lee smiled a little. "I'm good to go for a while."

She looked it, too. Like the end of the mission and the return to Atlantis had taken weight off her shoulders, and she could keep going for a while again. Brad was reminded of his observation when they'd first started to work together. That she seemed to hit her reserves early, but have a great deal of them.

It wasn't always motivating to see the mission leader in energy preservation mode, but that's where Darren and Laura came in. Over time he'd come to see it as a complex and largely subconscious interplay he'd become a part of, where they traded off being the 'driver'. By the time energy and optimism started to flag, Lee was still plugging along, and the unremittingness of that could be motivating all by itself.

"Well, the chair reclines," Dr Keller said with an understanding smile, and left.

Darren stood at Michèl's side for a while, and Lee came over to look at Laura. She stood very still for a long moment, and Brad thought she was a little unsettled by Laura's bald head, too.

"What went wrong?" he asked softly, nodding at the sleeping explosives expert.

Lee turned to him, coming to stand at his bed.

"Veins of some kind of mineral in the rock there that.. enhanced the explosion."

Her voice was low and rough. She looked him over for the space of a few seconds.

"It's good to see you awake."

She made an abortive motion with her hand in his direction, just a twitch, and he thought he knew what that was. He offered her his hand.

Her lips quirked, and she fit her hand to his wrist, just as he remembered she'd done after he'd been bitten. After a minute he turned his hand, and caught hers in a careful grip. Needed to feel her the strength in her hands to make this all real. Her eyes widened a little, but she understood this, too, because she squeezed his hand a little, rough skin and reassuringly solid grip.

When they'd disengaged, she gave a meaningful nod toward the button he'd been told to push for pain relief, and so far hadn't used.

 

When the pain relief kicked in, he breathed out slowly. He hadn't realised how much the pain had crept up until it eased off.

Lee glanced up from her tablet. She'd settled in the chair with her feet propped up on a second chair, watching muted episodes of Joy Of Painting. Apparently watching Bob Ross paint happy trees was relaxing. He'd decided to take her word for it.

Just as he sank into sleep, he realised that she'd automatically taken the first watch, just as she'd done a hundred times during their offworld missions. He was pretty sure she hadn't even thought about it. 

* * *

He wasn't entirely unsurprised to find himself awake at 2800 hours, in time for second watch. His body felt pleasantly fuzzy and remote, no pain, but he was clearheaded enough.

Lee was standing at Michèl's side, just watching him breathe.

When she finally turned around and noticed he was awake, he cut his eyes meaningfully toward the last free bed in the room.

She flashed a rueful smile and came over to offer him her tablet. Then she pushed the empty bed closer to the four of them, kicked off the ugly clogs, and settled down on her side, pulling a pillow against her stomach. He watched her eyes slide over all of them for a moment, and then she sighed comfortably, drew up her knees, and dropped right off.

* * *

Brad looked up from the chess game on the tablet to find Tim Bryan in the doorway, watching the assembled team with something of a smile around his eyes.

"You okay?" He pitched his voice low.

Bryan came into the room so he wouldn't wake the sleepers.

"Yeah, discovered a scratch on my ankle I wanted something for," he said softly.

That was probably bullshit, Brad knew. Bryan shared his own tendency to do a late night round, check everybody was okay before going to sleep himself.

Bryan looked around the room, at the beds all pushed close together.

"Iceman, this is really sickeningly cute. You should be glad I don't have a camera on me."

Brad shrugged. Yeah, it was, but he wasn't about to show he agreed.

"Everybody okay?" Bryan's eyes examined each of them in turn. Watched Darren and Laura for a moment, checked Michèl's monitors and IV line. He examined Lee's face and then her hands, perhaps checking if there was a colour difference between her wounded arm and her healthy one.

"I think so," Brad said. "About as okay as we can be."

"I'll bet."

Bryan leaned against the foot end of the bed Lee was on, the first sign of his own exhaustion Brad really noticed. The man could be like that, tireless in putting the health of others ahead of his own. Then when the crisis was well and truly over, his own body cashed its cheques. 

"It was good though," Bryan said softly. "Not the shit we found, but how the mission was run." He pushed himself up to sit on the foot end of the bed. Brad was pretty sure Lee was at least somewhat awake, and flicked his eyes to her face. Bryan shrugged. Apparently he didn't intend to say anything she shouldn't hear.

"Captain here has serious powers of organisation," Bryan said, looking at her face for a reaction. "Plus, kind of cute when she sleeps."

Brad wasn't about to admit to it, but he agreed. She had her knees pulled up and her hands tucked against her neck in a way that triggered a latent protective instinct or two. By contrast, Laura asleep, even drugged sleep, was just as self-posessive and animated as when she were awake.

"...'heard that..." Lee murmured, then sighed like that had been too much of an effort.

The men chuckled.

"..mm.. Tim?"

"Everybody is stable and resting, Lee-Lee," Bryan said, reading a whole question in her tone. Probably the question he would have asked, himself.

"...thanks..." she shifted a little, sliding her feet down. It took Brad a moment to realise that she wasn't trying to stretch out, but had put the soles of her feet against Tim's hip. The solid contact seemed to comfort her, because she sighed, and sank deeper into sleep. If he'd expected Bryan to look uncomfortable, the man just smiled slightly to himself, and stayed right where he was.

It occurred to Brad that after about a year of wondering what the hell was going on between these two, this was probably the most confirmation he would ever get that there _was_ something going on between those two.

* * *

He didn't remember going to sleep, but at some point he jolted out of a panic dream about his team being in trouble and he couldn't get to them.

"We're all here," somebody said in a low, soothing tone. "We're all right."

He lifted his head enough to see Captain Avery in the chair next to Michèl's bed, watching over the four of them. He was working on a large crossword by the light of a small reading lamp. There was a mug of tea standing by his side, and he gave Brad a tired smile.

"Are you okay?"

Brad's eyes fixed on Michèl's face, still in a way the man normally never was. The sound of the monitors by his side had been muted, but the patterns looked reassuringly regular. He turned a little to look behind him. Laura was on her back, taking up more space than her small frame should technically be able to. She was sleeping the deep, calm sleep of the expertly drugged.

On his other side Lee was still curled up. She had dark smudges under her eyes, but her face had smoothed out in sleep. Somebody had put a knitted blanket over her, dyed with the soft natural dyes the Athosians used. He thought he remembered Bryan doing it before he left, but he wasn't sure. He'd been drifting off, apparently.

"Yeah. Bad dream," he said finally, voice pitched low.

"We're here now," Darren said, seeming to unerringly know what Brad needed to hear. "One, two, three, four, five."

Brad stared at him a moment, and then it clicked. The Captain had once said that the one piece of advice General O'Neill had given him when he'd become team leader was 'Learn to count your guys.'

Apparently it was an SGC injoke, that team leaders were always counting their team. Through the gate: two, three, four. Coming out of tents in an indig village: two, three, four. Getting into a jumper, or a car: two, three, four.

Brad would have thought it was a joke if he hadn't caught Darren doing exactly that a few time every mission, just a quick glance to seek them all out. Now that he thought of it, he'd done it himself.

They weren't all okay. He would need another few weeks at least before he was mission ready again, Laura would need recovery time for the burns, Lee's arm woud need healing time, and even if Michèl recovered it had probably been his last offworld mission. AR-4 in its current incarnation was at an end.

But they were all here. For now, that was enough.

 

 


End file.
